Queuing Through the Night

“I got here at two o’clock in the morning” said one man, clutching his voter registration card at dawn outside the University of Juba. He had been to vote the previous day, but the queues were too long, full of southern Sudanese voters eager to imprint their finger next to a symbol representing secession. When the doors opened on this second day of voting, lines of people waited to make their mark.

The scene at the end of the day, however, was somewhat different. In Southern Sudan’s capital, the staff at the voting centres sat under the shade of mango trees, attending to a trickle of voters. It seemed as if Juba had voted in the first day and a half.